Linear B tablets dealing with teams of bulls or oxen (Post 1): two tabletsUnlike Linear B tablets on sheep, of which there are over 500, those dealing with teams of bulls or oxen are very rare, amounting to no more than 7 all told. Although this seems to defy common sense, it actually does not, since the raising of sheep was by far the most important activity of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy. In addition, the text on these tablets on bulls or oxen is so simple and so predictably repetitive that one wonders whether or not the scribes attached much importance to them. The mere fact that two of the tablets repeat the same name, Stomarchos, makes me wonder why any scribe would bother repeating text which is almost identical on two tablets, since this practice is almost unheard of on the tablets dealing with sheep, and on military, vessels and textiles tablets, which are the standard. The two tablets with his name on it do not appear here. Only one of them. But there you have it.

Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae

Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, the premier blog on the Internet dedicated solely to comprehensive & intensive research into Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, as well as to The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad.

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